Archives

Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church
exists for three primary purposes:

1) To Magnify and glorify God the Father through our worship
and praise...
2) To Manifest the love of Jesus Christ through our ministry, service, and witness and...

3) To Multiply by making disciples of all nations through the power
of the Holy Spirit.

It is with joy that I can announce that the elders of Faith EPC and I have finalized our new Vision Statement for the Church (printed above). Let me tell you the story of how we arrived at the final wording.

My personal goal for my first year at Faith EPC was simply to get to know the people of the Church, to begin to truly love them as their pastor, and to establish a healthy equilibrium in my teaching and preaching ministry. Soon, my petitions to God began to morph. While my prayers consisted originally of “Help me to know and love my people!” after about nine months I began asking the Lord to “Help me to see the Church not as it IS, but how it COULD be.” I had no idea that my prayers would receive such a deluge of insight from the Lord!

One of the first things that God showed me is that while the Church is already very healthy in most regards, we needed to have a vision statement for what we OUGHT to strive to be. After all, “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV).

Late one night I began scratching words furiously into my bedside journal. “Show me who we must become!” I prayed. I etched three words onto the page: Magnify, Manifest, Multiply. Those three words struck me in a powerful way. They seemed regal. They conveyed power and majesty. They were not flimsy or trite. I took the three words and divided them under three columns. “Magnify” (worship, exalt, lift up) seemed to be directed towards God the Father; He is, after all, the King whom we praise and adore. “Manifest” seemed best to describe the work of the Son, taking the love and holiness of God and bringing it tangibly into the world through His incarnation. As believers, we too must manifest (make evident, demonstrate, reveal) the love of the Son in our broken and hurting world. “Multiply” seemed to me to convey the great task of the Church, given in Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8, the Great Commission. This cannot be done without the power and attestation of the Holy Spirit. After finding all of these in Acts 2:42-47 rooted in the life of the early Church, I knew something powerful was afoot.

Next, I took the early form of the vision statement to the elders. I presented them with this reasoning for creating a vision statement in the first place:

Rationale:

1) Faith Church needs a coherent vision statement that succinctly defines our purpose as a church. By precisely defining what our priorities ARE, the elders of Faith Church will be better able to discern what programs, staffing, and events must be implemented in our local church context. In the same way, the elders of Faith Church will be better able to determine what programs and events DO NOT contribute to this end.

2) While Faith Church already has a mission statement (“Preaching Jesus; Changing Lives”), it seems to suggest that those who are not engaged in preaching are not central to the identity of the church. Our vision statement will supplement, but not replace, this.

3) A vision statement must be easy enough to memorize and yet profound enough to inspire our people to rally to a unified cause. A coherent statement of vision allows our people to build excitement as we together give our lives in sacrifice and service.

As Presbyterians, we do not have one sole human leader in the Church; rather we have a board of qualified, godly men under the Kingship of Christ. Our leadership, of course, is patterned off of the New Testament design evidenced in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. For this reason, I gave the elders a sample of the Vision Statement and asked them to pray about it for a month. While the early sentiment was receptive to the Vision Statement as I had prepared it, and we likely could have adopted it in early August, I asked the elders to think deeply for another month and beg God to show us how to adjust it, tweak it, and conform it to His will for our Church.

On September 5th, the elders and I went on a retreat to Lakewood Retreat Center. Here after spending time together praying aloud for our Church, her growth, health, and sanctification, we sat down to finalize the Vision Statement. We carefully combed through each line, parsing words carefully. Ultimately, though many changes were suggested, the final form ended up being exactly like the original version! Though we tried repeatedly, we could not seem to improve the Vision Statement by either adding anything that did not make the wording cumbersome, or eliminating wording that could improve its brevity. With prayer, and a vote, the Vision Statement became official!

As I stated in the above “rationale,” my desire for the Vision Statement was to draft something succinct, yet profound. Let me explain some of the intricacies.

1) Notice that the statement is Trinitarian; it intentionally focuses the heart and mind on each person of the godhead in turn. Much like the Apostles Creed, the Vision Statement sequentially turns the heart to each of the three persons of the Trinity. First the majesty of the Father is upheld, next the incarnation of the Son is exemplified, and finally the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit is invoked.

2) Secondly, notice that the statement is built around three strong verbs beginning with the letter “M.” This device of alliteration makes the statement easy to memorize for adults and children alike. It can be summarized as follows, “Magnify, Manifest, Multiply.” By using the literary device of alliteration the statement is easy to commit to memory.

3) Finally, the statement builds from the inside out. The core goal of Faith Church is to begin with a passion for worship. We might call this our “blazing center” (to borrow a phrase from John Piper). Without worship as our central purpose, we are flat, hollow, and shallow. Yet worship must begin to move outward, consuming the whole of the Christian life. For this reason, we intend for our passion for God’s glory to move outward to the immediate vicinity in which our live are centered, i.e. our families, places of employment, and community. Finally, we desire to culminate our worship by faithfully discharging Christ’s Great Commission with our ultimate goal of spreading the glory of God throughout the whole world by evangelism, discipleship, and missions.

These three goals, magnification, manifestation, and multiplication are simultaneously attainable—yet inexhaustible. They can be done; and yet they cannot be completed. Thus, we march onward until Christ returns and we hear the words we have longed for “Well done good and faithful servants.”